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Will Stocks Keep Rising?
There's no sign that Washington gridlock will abate. But the economy and the stock market may do well anyway.
The fiscal cliff is history. But the partisan paralysis in Washington will almost certainly continue throughout the year -- and that creates a huge headwind for the economy. Still, I think there's a good chance that the economy will continue to grow steadily, though slowly, in 2013 and that the stock market will deliver respectable gains.
Let's start with the bad news. Forget about a "grand bargain" to solve the debt crisis. House Republicans will continue to fight tax increases on the wealthy and insist on spending cuts, particularly in Medicare and Medicaid. Democrats will remain just as stubborn in opposition. Expect more havoc.
The next fight is already upon us. Washington will be consumed by President Obama's efforts to raise the debt ceiling, which House Republicans have seized on as their next opportunity to try to cut spending. What's more, the fiscal cliff bill that Congress passed on New Year's Day delays $110 billion in automatic spending cuts for only two months.
Next fall will likely bring another stalemate -- this one over the federal budget for the year that ends September 30, 2014. Howard Gleckman, of the non-partisan Tax Policy Center , writes that "2013 may be the year of perpetual fiscal policy crisis."
The debt crisis is serious. But with the economy still fragile, this isn't the right time to cut spending. Measures to address the deficit, including a mix of spending cuts and tax hikes, over the coming ten years would reassure the markets. But what we need today is more federal spending to stimulate growth. That, however, is something Congress is unlikely to approve.
No one in Washington is even talking about additional stimulus -- except Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, who, thankfully, is doing everything he can to boost economic growth. The Fed's tools, unfortunately, are blunt instruments.
Still, I'm moderately optimistic about the economy. Unemployment is declining, albeit much too slowly. The housing market is finally recovering. Animal spirits seem to be slowly awakening among corporate chieftains and investors alike. "The underlying trend in growth does not appear to be deteriorating," Jim O'Sullivan, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, said in a recent note to clients. He sees real gross domestic product rising 2.5% to 3% in 2013, up from an estimated 2.1% in 2012.
O'Sullivan is more upbeat than most economists. Alan Levenson, chief economist at T. Rowe Price, sees 2.25% GDP growth in 2013 and little chance of recession. Standard & Poor's predicts 2.3% growth. (Kiplinger's forecasts a 2.0% rise in GDP.)
When I want to know how the stock market will do, I often head first to a top-notch bond-fund manager. That's because bond managers have to get the big picture right to succeed.
After a long career at Loomis Sayles Bond, Kathleen Gaffney recently joined Eaton Vance, where she's in charge of a multisector bond fund the firm will launch this month.
Gaffney is upbeat about the U.S. economy and bonds that behave like stocks, such as convertible securities and low-rated "junk" bonds. "I think growth will increase in 2013, and the U.S. will stand out as the best place to be in the global economy," she says.
But high-quality bonds and the better class of junk bonds (those rated double-B) "are an accident waiting to happen," she warns. "There's very little upside and lots of downside for higher-quality bonds." What's more, "When money comes out of the bond market, it will come out very fast," boosting yields, which move in the opposite direction of prices.
Europe, she says, will probably take a year or two to emerge from recession. Nevertheless, she's finding value in some of the "peripheral European" bonds -- bonds in countries such as Ireland and Italy, which triggered the seemingly never-ending euro-zone crisis.
Emerging markets will have to cope successfully with inflation to do well this year, Gaffney says. She thinks some emerging markets have the political will and policy tools to handle inflation, and others don't. "We'll see the wheat separate from the chaff."
The stock market has essentially made an enormous round-trip in the past five years. For the five years through 2012, Standard & Poor's 500-stock index returned a meager annualized 1.7%. At the same time, the bull market that began March 9, 2009, is now almost four years old, and some worry that it's time for stocks to take a breather.
If the market heads south in 2013, though, it won't be because valuations are wildly out of whack. As of January 8, the S&P 500 index traded at 17 times reported earnings for the four quarters ended September 30. That's precisely the long-term average price-earnings ratio of 17. If the economy continues to recover, corporate profits will continue to rise. Indeed, the S&P 500 trades at just 13 times analysts' estimated earnings for 2013.
What's more, large companies, and, particularly large, relatively fast-growing companies, aren't commanding their usual premium P/E ratios in comparison with small-company stocks. That's why I keep arguing for overemphasizing big blue chips.
As you'd expect, stocks in foreign developed countries are cheaper than U.S. stocks. Europe and Japan face huge economic challenges. But the P/E of the MSCI EAFE index, which tracks stocks in developed markets, is just 12. So, don't ignore foreign stocks; they're cheap.
To me, the real bargain -- aside from the aforementioned high-quality U.S. stocks -- is emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets index trades at a P/E of only 10. Emerging markets are volatile, but they offer good value now, as well as good long-term growth prospects.
Steven T. Goldberg is an investment adviser in the Washington, D.C. area.
Kiplinger's Investing for Income will help you maximize your cash yield under any economic conditions. Subscribe now!

subset: commoncrawl


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'American Idol' heads into Sudden Death
American Idol has its Top 40, but half of them won't last long. The 40 will be narrowed to 20 over the next two weeks, with 10 performing each night. The girls start tonight. Share your opinions about their performance — and your opinions about my opinions — in tonight's live blog. — Brian Mansfield
Idol puts a new twist on its Top 40 round — "one song, one chance, no mercy," says Ryan Seacrest. Over the next four shows, 40 singers will sing — starting with 10 women tonight — and, by the time they're done, the field will have been narrowed to just 20.
Tonight, Idol comes to us from The Mirage in Las Vegas, the same stage where Cirque Du Soleil performs The Beatles' Love.
Randy Jackson says "Ten will sing tonight, five will go home." Once the judges get the group down to 20, America will start voting.
Keith Urban says each performer, who they know has talent, now has to "take it to the next level."
Nicki Minaj says, "We really have idea what it's going to look like at the end of the night," so each singer needs to bring her "A" game.
In case of a split decision among the four judges, Jimmy Iovine will break the tie.
Tonight's lineup: Jenny Beth Willis, Tenna Torres, Adriana Latonio, Brandy Hotard, Shubha Vedula, Kamaria Ousley, Kree Harrison, Angela Miller and Isabelle and Amber Holcomb.
(Spoiler alert) Who's out, who's in: If I'm picking five from tonight, I'd go with Angela Miller, Kree Harrison, Amber Holcomb, Adriana Latonio and Tenna Torres.
First to learn her fate tonight: Jenny Beth Willis. "The level of talent that came after you was so high," Keith Urban says, "we had to take a vote, and it's time to say goodbye."
Next, Brandy Hotard. Nicki Minaj gives her the news. "You really do shine, and sometimes, you know, it just doesn't work for the particular competition, and it didn't work for Idol 2013."
Randy Jackson tells Tenna Torres her status: "You've been amazing through this competition. … It's a tough thing, but you're going to stay with us. Congratulations."
Kree Harrison gets the news from Mariah Carey. "You know I've never liked you as a singer," Carey says facetiously. "You're going through, baby!"
Isabelle. Keith Urban says, "I thought tonight was a really strong, vocal powerhouse performance." The voting was mixed on her, he says. "Just know that your performance was really strong tonight. Unfortunately, we have to say goodnight to you."
Angela Miller. "Do you think you're going through?" asks Minaj. Miller responds, "I really hope so." Minaj says, "After tonight, the world gets to decide what they think of Angela. Congratulations."
So we've filled three of the five stools. Commercials, then the last two.
OK, we're back. "Certain things really didn't mesh" with some of the singers, Mariah Carey says. That's a bad sign for the promising but still green Shubha Vedula.
First, though, Kamaria Ousley will find out if she did well enough earlier in the competition to survive that train wreck of a performance tonight. She did have a hard time hearing, she tells the judges, but she's not making excuses.
Randy says the decisions haven't all been unanimous, with "tense words" over a few contestants. "Sorry to say, baby, you didn't make it tonight." No surprise there.
Amber Holcomb. "You have no idea, with all the judges trying to come together and form one unanimous decision, it's next to impossible," Mariah Carey says. Yeah, right. She's just trying to fake her out, and she's not good at it. "You're going through, baby!"
That leaves Adriana Latonio and Shubha Vedula. One gets the last spot, one goes home.
"Adriana just happens to be my best friend on the show," says Vedula. She'd love to be back on the stage, she says, but she looks like she knows she's going home. Latonio is almost in tears, saying she knows she and Vedula will keep in touch, no matter what happens.
"Millions, and I mean literally, millions of people now know about you," Keith Urban says, adding that they both have amazing talent. He thought both of them had excellent performances. He wants Shubha to know that at least one of the judges fought for her raw, real talent.
He notes, however, that Latonio had the audience on its feet.
"Shubha, we have to say goodnight to you, baby," Urban says. "Adriana, we want to you go through."
And, now, for a recap of the performances:
Nothing funny about Amber Holcomb's 'Valentine': Amber Holcomb, an 18-year-old assistant teacher, got cut in Vegas last year. She got a makeover for this year, though. "I've got to come harder this year," she says. "I've got to bring it."
With four notes of My Funny Valentine, Amber Holcomb shows Isabelle how to reinterpret a standard — and guarantees the previous singer will go home. It's beautiful in a Quiet Storm kind of way. It's not perfect, but the best parts are exquisite. And the runs, while perhaps unnecessary, are mighty impressive.
"Why, why do you make it so hard on everybody else?" says Keith Urban, who thinks she took a potentially old-fashioned song
"Legs for days, pretty little dimples," notes Nicki Minaj. "That vocal was A+++, but I'm wondering if that inner shine is going to shine through the TV for the people when they start voting. I just wish that it jumped out more. But the vocal is at the top of the class."
(Yes, the inner shine comes through the TV.)
Randy loves that she sang the song and took her time and made her big run shine because she didn't over-sing before it.
"I think you know how brilliant that performance was," Mariah Carey says. "I wanted to smack you." (That's a compliment.) "I can't wait for you to get in the studio and make a record."
An old-fashioned Isabelle, God bless her: Isabelle weighed 200 pounds in high school, and she hopes to become an inspiration to girls who find themselves in a similar situation, showing them they can do anything they set in their minds.
Unfortunately, she picks the most old-fashioned song of the night, the admittedly lovely God Bless the Child. She sings it well, but it's just as much a pageant performance as Brandy Hotard's was. This is the kind of performance you give three-quarters of the way through the season to seal the deal, not the kind you give to break out from the pack.
And, oh yeah, you can't run short on breath while singing it, either.
Keith Urban thinks all those boys who never asked her out in high school should be eating their hearts out tonight.
Nicki Minaj is proud for the obstacles she's overcome.
Randy Jackson congratulates her on getting her health together. She think she's hugely talented but that her performance was old-fashioned and pageant-y. "If I come back," she says, "you'll get a contemporary song." She should have thought of that before. You've got to stay a step ahead of the judges, especially this week.
Mariah Carey thinks the problem was in the arrangement, but that her voice and her heart is what sells her.
What this boils down to is that the judges spent more time talking about Isabelle's health and weight loss than they did the quality of her performance. That can't be a good sign.
Nobody's perfect, but the judges think Angela Miller might be: Angela Miller pretty much made the finals last week with her original song, unless she completely falls apart or clubs baby seals as part of her act tonight.
Fortunately, there are no seals on stage as she begins singing Jessie J's Nobody's Perfect. She's perfectly poised, intense in a different way than she was with her own song. It's a smart move, the kind of performance that allows people to expand their notion of her. Plus, it makes her look more professional. She doesn't have the best voice we've heard tonight, but she might be the most complete package.
Keith can't find enough adjectives to describe how much he likes her.
"I love you Angie," says Nicki Minaj, "but you know nothing is going to compare to that original performance." She tells her not to force anything, because "you're already a top contender in this competition"
She's one of Randy's favorites, too: "I think America is witnessing the building of a superstar."
Mariah Carey believes Miller has limitless potential. Like the others, she apparently didn't pay much attention to this performance: She's still busy thinking about You Set Me Free last week.
And you though Lauren Alaina was 'The One."
The Kree club: Kree Harrison works as a demo singer in Nashville (Ashley Monroe of the Pistol Annies just tweeted support for her). She's been up and down so far, but her performance for Stars last week more than doubled Grace Potter's sales of the track for the week. Tonight, she's singing Patty Griffin's Up to the Mountain, sung earlier on the show by Season 9 runner-up Crystal Bowersox.
It's a very subdued performance, bluesy in a Bonnie Raitt sort of way. Even when she climbs the melody, she leaves the sense that she could take it higher and harder if she wanted. Unlike Jenny Beth Willis earlier, Harrison actually sounds a little like Trisha Yearwood, a deep, rich alto.
"Ah, Kree! Kree! You are such a natural-born singer, and it's so beautiful to watch you sing, too," Keith Urban says. He loves the blues and gospel elements in her style of country. "You don't over-try, you don't have any desperation in the way you sing. … It's authentic, and God bless you for that."
Nicki Minaj says, "I would be very afraid if I were any of these other girls tonight. … Every time you sing a song, you make love to the song." She finds Harrison incredibly sexy when she sings.
"Here's another natural-born singer," Randy Jackson says. "I felt like I was at your show and you've been doing this for 25 years."
Mariah Carey's not sure she can add anything to what the other judges have said. She thinks Harrison looks like she's lost in the song when she sings. "You sang the hell out of that song."
We don't know a thing about Kamaria Ousley, and we won't: Kamaria Ousley has song backup for several acts, including Ledisi and Diddy Dirty Money, and she hopes American Idol will give her the chance to step into the spotlight. But picking Kelly Clarkson's Mr. Know It All isn't the way to go about it. Ousley's performance is the worst we've seen tonight, the sort of thing that has to give Shubha Vedula hope. It's shrill, slightly off-key and emotionally flat. "You don't know a thing about me," Ousley sings. I'm fine with that. Don't want to know any more.
"I don't know that that was a great song for you tonight," Keith Urban says. He knows she can really sing, but he doesn't think she made the emotional connection to the song.
Nicki Minaj thinks she looks nicely styled. However, "I never noticed until tonight is this throaty, twangy thing you were doing." She doesn't know if she put it on for the song, but it didn't work.
From the start, Randy Jackson says it never caught on. "The pitch was all over the place." It's the worst performance he has seen her make. "There's nothing redeemable I can say about it." Ouch.
Mariah Carey believes she might have struggled to hear herself, which would explain the pitch problems. But she thinks Ousley has a nice smile. Which sounds like faint praise, but Carey believes she's marketable.
Shubha Vedula goes Gaga: High-school senior Shubha Vedula has my favorite name of the season, and I've liked what little I've seen of her, which, admittedly, hasn't been much. I've got my fingers crossed for her.
Vedula's at the piano for a ballad performance of Lady Gaga's Born This Way, to which she adds a bit of Indian modal melodicism. The ballad part doesn't last long, though. The band starts into a stomping rock rhythm, Vedula stands up, and suddenly we're looking at another pageant performance. She returns to the modal runs for a bit, then tries a big rock ending. And fails miserably.
The audience loves it, but I get the sense Keith Urban doesn't. "You crammed a lot into that song, as far as the kind of performance it was." He found it confusing, yet he loves her voice.
"Prepare to boo again," Nicki Minaj says. "Shubha, there's so much going on." Apparently, this is an ongoing problem. She finds it almost comical. "It almost feels like a mash-up of Christina Aguilera and the Gangnam Style guy. … It was just something that was very confusing."
Randy Jackson agrees with Urban and Minaj, but he thinks she's got great potential, even though she does too many runs. He (like me) would have loved it if she had stayed at the piano. He's impressed with the potential (but potential won't get her through to the next round).
Mariah Carey also would have preferred if she had stayed at the piano, feeling it was less forced than the rest of her performance.
Wipe that smile off your face: Brandy Hotard says she has worked since she was 16 to be on American Idol. She's now 26 -- wonder if that means she's a slow learner.
She makes an interesting pick — Travis Tritt's country hit Anymore. She starts solidly, and the camera loves her close-up, where her eyes just sparkle. But some of the notes, even the big ones, fall a little flat. And the top of the melody just isn't in her range. Too bad -- this one showed promise at the start.
Keith Urban compliments her song choice, which he's never heard a girl sing before. "My only issue with the performance is … an emotional connection inconsistency. It's a pretty heartbreaking, and there were times when you seemed like you were quite happy about it." Ultimately, he didn't quite believe the lyric from her.
"I wish you would get out of my head and stay out of my head," says Nicki Minaj, who wondered why she was smiling during such a sad song. "That was a pageant delivery of a song."
Randy Jackson didn't think the performance told the judges enough about who she was and the kind of artist she wants to be. He predicts she'll go home.
"When you open up your voice in your mid-register … it's a million-dollar moment," says Mariah Carey. She recommends doing more songs with that in mind. But I'm guessing she won't be doing them here.
Ain't no way — and then there is. Adriana Latonio, American Idol's first contestant from Alaska, has a big voice, too, but it's completely different from Tenna Torres. She gives a sultry performance of Aretha Franklin's Ain't No Way. She's got an old-school R&B approach, and her voice has a really interesting break in it.
She gets a standing ovation from much of the audience.
"Now the night has started!" says Keith Urban, who says she had all the soul the song required.
Nicki Minaj wants to know how tall she is. "Five foot," Latonio responds. From Minaj's notes: "Little tiny thing but she commands the stage from the second she walks out." She thinks Latonio is poised and ready. "Congratulations, my little ladybug."
Randy Jackson says, "Yo! This girl's a pro!"
Mariah Carey wants to know how she feels. "It went better than I thought it would," the 17-year-old admits. "Really nice," Carey tells her. "A+."
Tenna Torres takes control: Tenna Torres is the singer who went to Camp Mariah when she was 13. So Mariah Carey would be "personally very proud" if Idol produced a winner like her.
Torres sings a torch take on Natasha Bedingfield's Incompatible. She's a lot more self-possessed than Jenny Beth Willis was, very much in control of her voice and doing a lot more with it. This kind of singer hasn't done especially well with voters the past couple years (think Pia Toscano), but it's fine at this stage.
"That was a beautiful song for you to do," says Keith Urban, who doesn't know Bedingfield's version. He especially admired her control and likes "the diversity of your voice, emotionally."
Nicki MInaj wonders why she looks so sad. "It's a sad song," Torres tells her. Minaj was reminded why she fell in love with Torres' voice in the first place. "You had control of the whole song," and her tone puts Minaj in mind of '80s R&B singers. However: "Lose the hair." It's aging her, she says.
For Randy Jackson, "This is the start of the night." He loved the way she connected with the emotion of the song. "This is what becoming the next American Idol is really about."
Torres knows Carey loves her. "This was all you," she says. "You gave every bit of your emotion."
Heaven, heartache and the power of the first performance.
Willis, a high-school junior from Owensboro, Ky., is up first, singing Trisha Yearwood's Heaven, Heartache and the Power of Love. Singing a Yearwood song, for a country singer, is a bit like singing Whitney Houston for a pop singer -- there's almost no way to match the power. Willis certainly doesn't, and she's got pitch troubles, too. She's overmatched at every level — she doesn't even measure up to the memories of other country singers this season, like Rachel Hale, Janelle Arthur and Kree Harrison, who'll perform later tonight. Completely forgettable.
Keith Urban says it was a great way to start the show, but he's got mixed feelings. He likes her effortless confidence but not so much the song choice.
Nicki Minaj likes her voice but didn't "feel like you came alive until the very end when you gave us that big, bright, beautiful smile." She thought the audience was more exciting than Willis was.
For Randy Jackson, Willis' performance "felt a little jerky" and thought she wasn't in sync with the band. The last note was great, however. "It may spell a little trouble for you later on tonight."
Mariah Carey wants to know if she had fun. She did. "I think you could be more dynamic during the verses, vocally," she says. Carey likes her low range and thought the last note was a winner.
But one note does not a semifinalist make.


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Ark. Senate passes measure to ban most abortions
The Arkansas Senate voted Thursday to prohibit most abortions if a heartbeat is detected, ignoring warnings from opponents that banning the procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy would invite lawsuits.
If enacted, the ban would be the most stringent in the nation. The Ohio House passed a similar ban in 2011, but it was sidelined in the Senate last year over concerns that it might be found unconstitutional. Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe told reporters Thursday that's the same concern that he's researching.
"I'm waiting on lawyers. I think that's the big concern right now - does it run afoul of the Supreme Court or constitutional restrictions?" Beebe said. "That's the first thing we're looking at."
The Senate approved the new ban the same day that a House committee advanced two other abortion restrictions, part of a package of legislation anti-abortion groups believe are poised to become law now that Republicans control the state General Assembly.
The Senate approved the proposed "Arkansas Human Heartbeat Protection Act" by a 26-8 vote. The measure, which now heads to a House committee, requires a test to detect a fetal heartbeat before an abortion is performed. If one is detected, a woman could not have an abortion, except in cases of rape, incest and if a mother's life is in danger.
Similar legislation is also being considered in North Dakota and Mississippi. All have faced complaints from abortion rights groups that it runs afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion up until viability, usually at 22 to 24 weeks.
"I'm asking you to stand up for life, and I believe when there is a heartbeat, based upon even the standard the Supreme Court has utilized, you cannot have a viable child without a heartbeat," Sen. Jason Rapert, the bill's sponsor, told lawmakers before they approved the legislation.
Five Democrats joined all 21 of the Senate's Republicans to vote for the restriction. Two Democratic lawmakers who spoke out against the bill said they believed it would be an invasion of women's rights to make decisions about their own health if the state enacted the ban.
"I don't want to go back to when women used kerosene and clothes hangers because they didn't have a choice," Sen. Linda Chesterfield, D-Little Rock, told lawmakers.
A day earlier, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union told a Senate panel that the group would sue the state if it enacted the new restriction. Opponents have also noted that the only way to detect a fetal heartbeat at six weeks is by using a vaginal probe.
"Can you imagine what kind of feeling that would cause when inserted into a woman?" Sen. Stephanie Flowers, D-Pine Bluff, asked Rapert on the Senate floor. Flowers voted against the bill.
"No," Rapert, R-Conway, replied.
The bill could go before the House Public Health Committee as early as next week, but its fate is uncertain. Democrats control 11 of the 20 seats on the panel, and Republicans only hold a 51 seat majority in the 100-member House.
Though the Legislature has considered abortion restrictions in recent years, most proposals haven't made it to the governor's desk under Democrat majorities. Beebe, however, has backed some abortion restrictions. He signed into law a proposal two years ago placing new regulations on the clinics that offer the abortion pill and in 2009 he signed legislation that mirrors a federal law banning late-term abortions.
Abortion rights advocates criticized the Senate for passing the legislation.
"This bill not only jeopardizes the health of all women who become pregnant in Arkansas, it's also unconstitutional," said Murry Newbern, lobbyist for Planned Parenthood of the Heartland. "It creates an undue burden for a woman seeking safe abortion and contradicts Roe v. Wade. "
The two other abortion restrictions that passed the House Public Health, Welfare and Labor Committee earlier Thursday including legislation that would ban most abortions starting at the twentieth week of a woman's pregnancy based on the disputed notion that a fetus is capable of feeling pain at that point. The measure provides for some exceptions involving the health of the mother but it does not exempt rape or incest.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Andy Mayberry, R-Hensley, said that passing the legislation was a moral obligation. Mayberry's wife, Julie, testified about her experience carrying to term a child with a disability.
Lawmakers on the House committee also approved legislation, without any discussion, that would prohibit most abortion coverage offered by Arkansas insurers under part of the federal health care overhaul. That measure does include rape and incest exceptions. It was approved by a voice vote with some dissent.
Abortion opponents hailed the votes Thursday as their biggest gains in years in Arkansas.
"I think a lot of people are beginning to understand that the people of Arkansas by and large are pro-life and you're seeing that reflected in how people vote here," said Jerry Cox, president of the Arkansas Family Council.
Associated Press Writer Chuck Bartels contributed to this report.


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Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered. We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil.
The Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a philosophy of continuous improvement which is defined as a framework that can be applicable to many disciplines. The theory is based on the idea that in any complex system, there is usually one aspect of that system that limits its ability to achieve its goal or optimal functioning. To achieve any significant improvement of the system, the constraint must be identified and resolved.
Software optimization, in the generic sense, is the process of improving the software by eliminating bottlenecks so that it operates more efficiently on a given hardware and uses resources optimally. In keeping with Knuth's advice, TOC can help developers to identify the bottlenecks of their code for optimization that have the most return on investment (ROI). Identifying the bottlenecks in the target application and eliminating them appropriately is the key to an efficient optimization.
There are many optimization methodologies, which help developers to answer the questions of why to optimize, what to optimize and how to optimize, and these methods aid developers to reach their performance requirements. These questions are not any different than the questions asked to improve an organization, supply chain management, or manufacturing.
In this article, I propose that TOC, which is a philosophy of management and improvement, can be also used and applied for software optimization. The focus of this article is how to identify the bottlenecks and eliminate them with the help of Intel VTune Performance Analyzer while following the framework that is described by Theory of Constraints.
Introduction to Software Optimization: Hotspots and More
Performance tuning usually focuses on reducing the time it takes to complete a well-defined workload. Performance events can be used to measure the elapsed time and therefore reducing the elapsed time of completing a workload is equivalent to reducing measured processor cycles (clockticks).
Intel VTune Performance Analyzer is a powerful tool for software developers who are interested in performance analysis. The easiest way to identify the hotspots in a given application is to sample the application with processor cycles and VTune analyzer helps the developer identify where most of the CPU cycles are spent, in addition to many other processor events1, by utilizing two profiling techniques; sampling and call graph. The sampling can be in two forms: processor event based and time based sampling. Event-based sampling (EBS) relies on the performance monitoring unit (PMU) supported by the processors. From this point forward, I refer to event-based sampling (EBS) as "sampling."
When a sampling activity used, VTune analyzer by default uses processor cycles and instructions retired to analyze the application. (Recent generations of Intel 64 and IA-32 processors feature microarchitectures using an out-of-order execution engine. They are also accompanied by an in-order front " instructions retired.") The count of cycles, also known as "clockticks," forms the fundamental basis for measuring how long a program takes to execute. The total cycle measurement is the start to finish view of total number of cycles to complete the application of interest. In typical performance tuning situations, the metric Total cycles can be measured by the event CPU_CLK_UNHALTED.CORE.
The other event used by default sampling activity is instructions retired. This event indicates the number of instructions that retired or executed completely. This does not include partially processed instructions executed due to branch mis-predictions. The ratio of clockticks (non-halted) and instructions retired is called clocks per instruction retired (CPI) and it can be good indicator of performance problems (indicator of the efficiency of instructions generated by the compiler and/or low CPU utilization). (The Intel Core microarchitecture is capable of reaching CPI as low as 0.25 in ideal situations. The greater value of CPI for a given workload indicates that there are more opportunities for code tuning to improve performance.)
The approach I use here is explained in greater details in Intel 64 and IA-32 Intel Architecture Optimization Reference Manual. In this approach, it is accurate to say that the total number of cycles an application takes is the sum of the cycles issuing μops4and the cycles not issuing μops (stalls). This formula is given with the processor event names in Formula 2.
Total Cycles = Cycles issuing μops + Cycles not issuing μops
It is worth noting that this decomposition is approximate in its nature so it should be taken as estimation.
Therefore, my focus is on three basic concepts:
- Minimizing "stalls" by reducing or optimizing long latency operations such as memory accesses, floating-point operations, etc.,
- Minimizing "non-retired" instructions by reducing the branch mis-predictions,
- Minimizing "retired" instructions.
In Intel Core microarchitecture (Figure 1), up to four μops may be retired per cycle and 6 μops6 can be executed. The results of Intel 64 and IA-32 instructions must be committed in original program order before they are retired. Reducing the number of retired instructions will improve the execution time as will reducing the stalls.
Cycles wasted due to stalls indicate sub-optimal execution; therefore identifying them will be the main focus. Stalls can be categorized as"
- Execution stalls
- Front End stalls
- Mispredicted branch pipeline flushing
- Cycles wasted executing instructions that are not retired
With the introduction of Core architecture, the approach to identify and root-cause stall cycles became easier and more systematic. Before going into deeper analysis and explanation of the events, let's introduce the Theory of Constraints.
Applications Will Perform as Fast as Their Bottlenecks: Gentle Introduction to the Theory of Constraints
TOC is a philosophy of management and improvement developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt. As mentioned earlier, it is a process of continuous improvement which focuses on the idea that in any complex system, there is usually one aspect of that system that limits its ability to achieve its goal.
The TOC processes defined by Goldratt are used to improve the health of an organization and these processes are very similar to the ones used by software optimization methodologies.
In this theory, five steps are defined. Before these steps are applied, a goal must be articulated. In our case, this is improving the performance of our application or meeting a performance requirement. Having articulated the goal, the steps can be given as:
- Identify the constraint (the root-cause that prevents achievement of the goal)
- Decide how to exploit the constraint (make sure the constraint identified is doing what it is designed to do. i.e: execution unit is executing but not stalling)
- Subordinate and synchronize everything else to the above decisions
- Elevate the performance of the constraint (increase capacity of the constraint. i.e: taking advantage of multiple cores, parallelism)
- If in any of the above steps the constraint has shifted, go back to Step 1.
The most critical piece in these steps is identifying the constraints. The questions to ask are:
- "What to change?",
- "To What to Change?" and
- "How to Change?"
The TOC defines processes called thinking processes to answer these questions and provides a problem-solving framework based on cause and effect. The basic idea while trying to reach our goal (desired performance) is to identify the hotspots, understand the underlying cause and effect relation and eliminate the causes. If we take the four major stall categories given earlier as an example, we can say that most of the time execution stalls are the cause of performance problems (effect) and resource related stalls. While sub-optimal algorithms are the cause of execution stalls (effect).
In the rest of the article I show how you can identify the constraints preventing optimal application performance by using the TOC methodology as a guideline for software optimization on Core architecture.


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The weekend homicides of ex-Navy SEAL and "American Sniper" author Chris Kyle and a friend in Texas have stoked fresh concerns among mental-health experts and veteran advocates that the crime's PTSD theme will further stigmatize and dampen an already-soggy job market for men and women home from war.
"What worries me about this story is it will frighten potential employers away from hiring veterans who have been in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Dr. Harry Croft, a San Antonio-based psychiatrist who has talked with more than 7,000 veterans diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
"The myth is all of them have PTSD — not true, only 20 percent. Another myth is that all of them who have a severe case of it — not true; it goes from very mild to severe. The third myth is that everybody with PTSD is aggressive, unreliable, or trouble in the workplace, and none of that is (true) either. It scares me," Croft said.
The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans was 11.7 percent in January compared to 9.1 percent in January 2012, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Younger female veterans grappled with a 17.1 percent unemployment rate last month — virtually unchanged from one year ago — while the unemployment rate for younger male veterans was 10.5 percent in January, which marked an increase from 7.7 percent during the same month in 2012.
"One of the things I talk about in the presentations I give to employers is how the stigma of the crazed vet like Sgt. (Robert) Bales, or, now, this young man in Texas, is very rare and it's atypical. Now, that doesn't mean that a vet with PTSD doesn't have anger and agitation issues. But generally, it's worse at home than it is at work," said Croft, who co-authored "I Always Sit with My Back to the Wall: Managing Traumatic Stress and Combat PTSD."
Chris Kyle, a sniper in Iraq, was so feared that he was dubbed "The Devil of Ramadi" and had an $80,000 bounty on his head. Tragically, it wasn't enemy fire that killed him, but a fellow soldier asking for help with PTSD. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports.
Eddie Ray Routh, 25, a Marine Corps corporal from 2006 to 2010 who deployed to Iraq in 2007, was arraigned Sunday on two counts of capital murder in the deaths of Kyle, 38, and Chad Littlefield, 35, at a shooting range in North Texas. Both men were killed with a semi-automatic handgun.
According to Erath County Sheriff Tommy Bryant, Routh "may have been suffering from some type of mental illness from being in the military himself." Bryant added that Routh's mother possibly contacted Kyle to try to help her son. The sheriff also learned, he said, that the three men might have been at the range "for some type of therapy that Mr. Kyle assists people with."
Some veterans who toil in the job-mentoring trenches to try to deflate those unemployment stats share Croft's concern that Texas shootings may bolster an existing PTSD stigma and inject more doubt into the minds of some hiring managers.
"Unfortunately, I think that's a possibility," said John E. Pickens, executive director of VeteransPlus and the Yellow Ribbon Registry Network. VeteransPlus has offered financial counseling to more than 150,000 current and former service members. The nonprofit also has partnered with The WorkPlace, Citi and Wal-Mart to help long-term, unemployed veterans improve their job candidacies and find work.
"But I'm not sure how to address that (stigma) because for those people who read something like this and take away a negative impression, it's very difficult — other than having a one-on-one, good experience with a veteran — to be able to overcome that," said Pickens, a former Army combat medic.
Iraq veteran Ed Richardson, who's now attending college but who's been scouting for a job since December 2011, has watched employers offer subtle signals about his war service during job interviews.
"I've had people's body language completely change with me — their eyes get large and they want to lean back in their chair" when the topic arises with hiring managers, said Richardson, 49, who is in the Army Reserves and who lives in Kentucky. "Some ask me: 'Have you had any issues? Because some veterans have had the problems.'
"Being a veteran and having that going against me (in job hunting), you have to have something to counter it and I believe having an associate degree can help, or preferably a bachelor's degree," Richardson said. He ideally wants to work in federal law enforcement. "But I'm very positive about my outlook."
- Murder of former Navy SEAL turns spotlight on veteran hunting and shooting clubs
- Ex-Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle died pursuing his passion
- Florida guide uses hunting as rustic therapy for combat veterans


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Correction: Jack Signorella is a mediator at the Monterey College of Law and a member of the Monterey County Bar Association. He was incorrectly identified as an attorney in an earlier version of this story.
Concocting an idea that could make a positive impact on our world can be challenging enough. Presenting that concept to a live audience in 3 minutes or less — that"s even tougher.
Nearly two dozen people — many of them with knocking knees — participated in open auditions Saturday at TEDx Monterey, a competition built around the theme of "Ideas Worth Spreading." That"s the heart of the mission statement of an international nonprofit organization known as TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design).
The auditions at the Monterey Institute of International Studies" Irvine Auditorium were the second "open call for ideas" in a month. Sometime next week, TEDx Monterey will invite about a dozen participants with the best ideas to return April 26 with more elaborate presentations up to 18 minutes long.
"We professionally videotape the presentations, then upload those videos for the (global) TED organization. If they like a video, they"ll post it on their TED.com page, and then the numbers go up — a lot of people see that video," said Eva Gudbergsdottir of TEDx Monterey. "If a video gets, maybe, 200,000 views, all kinds of things can happen from that. It"s all about exposure."
A lot of the ideas shared Saturday seem well worth exposing.
Todd Miller, a Carmel Valley entrepreneur, founded Thwabbit.com, a "virtual company" conceived when the dotcom bust forced him to give up the brick-and-mortar office that housed his previous business.
What resulted, he said, was a surprising prosperity that made him realize a successful company doesn"t necessarily require a building.
"American workers collectively commute 340 billion miles, to and from work, every year. That works out to 400 round trips to Pluto," Miller said. "And they"re burning more than gas, they"re burning time: 11 million person years every year, just going to and from work."
If all of those people worked at home, said Miller, the U.S. would eliminate all Middle East oil imports. It would cut 500 million metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. The federal deficit would be reduced by 11 percent. Worker productivity would double. Businesses would save $40,000 per year per employee, and each employee would get the equivalent of a 23 percent raise because of reduced expenses.
Monterey Peninsula resident Nicole Ocean told the audience that "stress kills, and love heals." She described how she nearly melted down overworking herself with a start-up business while doing double-duty as a single mom.
Her path to renewal, Ocean said, was creating her own version of a 10-step program. She stopped blaming others for her problems and learned to recognize the triggers creating stress in her life. She filtered out negative information and toxic people. And she invested in herself.
"You need to say, "I"m valuable," no matter what you hear from people around you," Ocean said.
Jack Signorella, a mediator at the Monterey College of Law, believes violence and bullying could be reduced if schools sent motivated students through a training program, certified them as mediators and created a student mediation panel (with a faculty adviser) to resolve disputes.
"I think students would be more likely to come to other students to discuss potential problems — let"s say between the bully and the bullied — that might be mediated," he said. "Learning how to communicate in a non-threatening, non-aggressive, objective way enables you not only to mediate the problem, but, hopefully in the process, you"re also teaching skills in communication."
Marina author Pat Hanson showed a picture of a granddaughter she hasn"t seen in eight years and identified herself as "an invisible grandparent," one of millions who, because of complicated custody issues, distance and choices made long ago, are kept from seeing their grandchildren.
"We have no way to pass along our values and memories," she said. "Having a child opens a door to love on a deeper level, and grandparents can take that even further."
Hanson said "invisible grandparents" can pass on a legacy of love and heal some of the pain in creative ways.
"Mine was to write letters. I wrote hundreds to Annie for the hypothetical day she might look me up," she said.
Monterey"s Warren Anderson made a similar presentation about letters he wrote to his daughter, now 21 years old, beginning seven months before she was born.
"I wrote a letter to my daughter when we were picking out here name," he said. "I wrote one after I heard her heartbeat the first time. I wrote one to tell her about the evening my wife and I spent about an hour, dancing in the dark in our living room, trying to quiet her down. I wrote one after the first time we rode the Giant Dipper rollercoaster in Santa Cruz, when she was 5 years old."
The letters were important, Anderson said, because "for men like me, they were a way to connect and share with a little being the feelings that were going on at a time sooner than she was able to receive it. It was a way to open up and share those poignant moments."
For more information about TED and TEDx, see www.ted.com and www.tedxmonterey.org.
Dennis Taylor can be reached at 646-4344 or firstname.lastname@example.com.


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A tea house or tea room is an establishment which primarily serves tea and other refreshments. Although its function varies widely depending on the culture, tea houses often serve as centers of social interaction. Some cultures have a variety of distinct tea-centered houses or parlours that all qualify under the English language term "tea house" or "tea room."
In China and Nepal, a tea house (茶館 cháguăn or 茶屋 cháwū; Standard Nepali:चिया घर) is traditionally a place which offers tea to its consumers. People gather at tea houses to chat, socialize, and enjoy tea, and young people often meet at tea houses for dates. The Guangdong (Cantonese) style tea house is particularly famous outside of China especially in Nepal's Himalayas. These tea houses, called chálou (茶樓) serve dim sum (點心), and these small plates of food are enjoyed alongside tea.
In Japanese tradition a tea house ordinarily refers to a private structure designed for holding Japanese tea ceremonies. This structure and specifically the room in it where the tea ceremony takes place is called chashitsu (茶室, literally "tea room"). The architectural space called chashitsu was created for aesthetic and intellectual fulfillment.
In Japan during the Edo period, the term "tea house" could also refer to a place of entertainment with geisha or as a place where couples seeking privacy could go. In this case the establishment was referred to as an ochaya (お茶屋), which literally meant "tea house". However, these establishments only served tea incidentally, and were instead dedicated to geisha entertainment or to providing discreet rooms for visitors. This usage is now archaic. Contemporary Japanese go to modern tearooms called kissaten on main streets to drink black or green tea as well as coffee.
In Central Asia the term tea house could refer to Shayhana in Kazakh, Chaykhana in Kyrgyz and Choyxona in Uzbek, which literally means a tea room. In Tajikistan. The largest tea houses are Orient Tea house or Chinese Tea house, Orom Tea house in (Isfara) town. On the 15th anniversary of Independence in Tajikistan, the people of Isfara town presented Isfara Tea house to Kulyab city for its 2700th anniversary on September 2006. Tea houses are present in other parts of Central Asia, notably in Iran and also Turkey. Such tea houses may be referred to, in Persian, as Chay-Khaneh, or in Turkish, çayhane - literally, the "house of tea." These tea houses usually serve several beverages in addition to tea.
In Arabic-speaking countries such as Egypt, establishments that serve tea, coffee and herbal teas like karkade are referred to as ahwa or maqha (Arabic: مقهى) and are more commonly translated into English as coffeehouse.[1]
Tea drinking is a pastime closely associated with the English.[2] Tea first arrived in England during Cromwell's protectorate and soon became the national drink, with tea drinking a national pastime for the English. As early as 1784, La Rochefoucauld noted that "throughout the whole of England the drinking of tea is general". Nevertheless, Anna Russell, Duchess of Bedford, is credited with the invention of afternoon tea.[3] By 1840, it had spread to other parts of English society with the female manager of London's Aerated Bread Company attributed with innovating the first commercial public tearoom.[2]
Thomas Twining opened the first known tea room in 1706, which still remains at 216 Strand, London. In 1787, the company created its logo, still in use today, which is thought to be the world's oldest commercial logo that has been in continuous use since its inception.[4] Under Associated British Foods since 1964, Stephen Twining now represents the company's tenth generation. In 2006, Twinings celebrated its 300th anniversary with a special tea and associated tea caddies. Twining's is a Royal Warrant holder (appointed by HM The Queen).
There is a long tradition of tea rooms within London hotels, for example, at Brown's Hotel at 33 Albemarle Street, which has been serving tea in its tea room for over 170 years.[5]
In the UK today, a tea room is a small room or restaurant where beverages and light meals are served, often having a sedate or subdued atmosphere. A customer might expect to receive cream tea or Devonshire tea, often served from a china set, and a scone with jam and clotted cream – alternatively a High tea may be served. In Scotland teas are usually served with a variety of scones, pancakes, (Scottish) crumpets and other cakes. In a related usage, a tea room may be a room set aside in a workplace for workers to relax and (specifically) take refreshment during work-breaks. Traditionally a staff member serving food and beverages in such a tea room would have been called a tea lady. Tea rooms are popular in Commonwealth countries, particularly Canada, with its harsh winters, when afternoon tea is popular. The menu will generally have similar foods to in the UK, but with the addition sometimes of butter tarts or other small desserts like nanaimo bars or pets de sœurs. Tea is commonly consumed in other Commonwealth countries alone or in the British fashion.
In France, a tea room is called Salon de thé, and pastries and cakes are also served. It seems having a separate tea house was a culture in many countries in Europe. In Germany, one Teehaus was particularly famous during the Third Reich era where the German Dictator Adolf Hitler used to have his daily walk and tea on Mooslahnerkopf hill near his residence Berghof, in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler's tea house was a cylindrical structure built in the woods.
In the Czech Republic, the tea room culture has been spreading since the Velvet Revolution 1989 and today, there are nearly 400 tea rooms[6] (čajovny) in the country (more than 50 just in Prague), which is according to some sources[7] the largest concentration of tea rooms per capita in Europe.
In Eastern Europe, countries like Latvia are located at the crossroads of trade routes between Western and Eastern Europe, and tea came both from the East and West. One example of mixed tea is a new type of tea room - Club tea culture. For example - a tea club Goija.
The popularity of the tea room rose as an alternative to the pub in the UK and US during the temperance movement in the 1830s. The form developed in the late 19th century, as Catherine Cranston opened the first of what became a chain of Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms in Glasgow, Scotland, and similar establishments became popular throughout Scotland. In the 1880s, fine hotels in both the United States and England began to offer tea service in tea rooms and tea courts, and by 1910 they had begun to host afternoon tea dances as dance crazes swept both the U.S. and the UK. Tea rooms of all kinds were widespread in Britain by the 1950s, but in the following decades cafés became more fashionable, and tea rooms became less common.
Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa, Micronesia, Realm of New Zealand
United Kingdom, City of London, Paris, Greater London, Australia
Pudong, Yangtze River Delta, Jiangsu, China, Zhejiang
Tea, Tea ceremony, Matcha, Medicine, Buddhism
Black tea, India, Tea, Green tea, World War II
Tea, Coffee, Taiwan, Chinese tea culture, Gongfu tea ceremony
Tea, Japanese tea ceremony, Coffee, Tea culture, Ritual
Tea, India, Black tea, Berlin, Spice


text: The privy was built behind the carriage house to give some privacy to the family. There are four holes in this structure which could be emptied from the back. That feature made it easier to make use of the waste as fertilizer in the fields. Contemporary chemistry books and agricultural journals encouraged such use of nitrogen-rich human waste.


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Angular contact ball bearing uses axially asymmetric races. An axial load passes in a straight line through the bearing, whereas a radial load takes an oblique path that tends to want to separate the races axially. So the angle of contact on the inner race is the same as that on the outer race.
Angular contact bearings better support "combined loads" (loading in both the radial and axial directions) and the contact angle of the bearing should be matched to the relative proportions of each. The larger the contact angle (typically in the range 10 to 45 degrees), the higher the axial load supported, but the lower the radial load. In high speed applications, such as turbines, jet engines, and dentistry equipment, the centrifugal forces generated by the balls changes the contact angle at the inner and outer race. Ceramics such assilicon nitride are now regularly used in such applications due to their low density (40% of steel). These materials significantly reduce centrifugal force and function well in high temperature environments. They also tend to wear in a similar way to bearing steel—rather than cracking or shattering like glass or porcelain.
Most bicycles use angular-contact bearings in the headsets because the forces on these bearings are in both the radial and axial direction.
Angular contact ball bearing type:
Single row angular contact ball bearing: only carry a direction of the axial load, when in bear radial load, can cause additional axial force must be applied to the corresponding reverse load, therefore, the bearings are generally used in pairs.
Double row angular contact ball bearing: At the same time can bear radial and axial load joint load, limit shaft on both sides of the axial displacement.
Angular contact ball bearing main technical indicators:
(1) Bearing precision index: More than GB / 307.1-94 P4 level accuracy
(2) High-speed performance index: 1.3~1.8x 106 /min
(3)Service life:more than 1500h
1) Load capacities are higher than deep groove ball bearings of same dimensions
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North America GFS Snow Forecast +48 hour Chart
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About GFS
Global Forecast System. The operational numerical weather forecasting model run by NCEP. The GFS superceded the AVN and MRF models, on which it is largely based. Forecast data from the GFS is available out to 180 hours at full resolution and 16 days at a reduced resolution.
Weather News
Broken Hill cops a drenching with half of all last year's rainfall falling in just 20 minutes
Dry outback towns in the New South Wales far west have been drenched with their heaviest rainfalls in recent years including Broken Hill, hit with unusual flash flooding.
Northern Territory September rain and thunderstorms
A low pressure trough has drawn in tropical moisture and spread it across northern parts of the Northern Territory, resulting in significant September rain and a few storms.


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IntroductionBy Alan Horowitz
Talent Search 2.0
Ken Hill, vice president of information technology at General Dynamics Corp., is having déjà vu all over again. Any day now, if management approves a major project aimed at wiring up the company's purchasing operations to the Internet, Hill will face a huge but all-too-familiar staffing challenge. He'll have to beat the busheshardto find the IT help he needs to pull off the project.
Top IT pros are hard to find at any time, but now Hill needs to find an ever rarer kind of technologist: a quick learner who can both collaborate with vendors and users, and simultaneously manage five competing project schedulesall while developing new systems using myriad disparate technologies. Hill is not alone: CIOs across the corporate landscape are finding themselves having to scramble harder, even now, for good help. "E-business projects raise the bar on the skills you need to get your projects off the ground," Hill says. "These days, you need technologists who are also good at managing business change, finding the business payoff and anticipating the business needs." In other words, says Hill about e-business: "It's not about the technology, stupid. It's about process change."
For years, CIOs like Hill have suffered from a chronic shortage of skilled IT professionals, but the big surprise now is that the shortage is still bad, and it's about to get worse. Even with the economic slowdown, new foreign-worker visa laws and the sudden availability of thousands of former dot-com tech whizzes, there's still an IT job-shortage crisis and, says McKinsey & Co. senior partner Bruce Roberson, large companies in particular are just beginning to enter the early stages of a decades-long shortfall.
To be sure, the current economic slowdown has eased the immediate crunch a bit: The Information Technology Association of America, the computer industry trade group, says vacancies are down 51 percent. But there are still some 303,000 tech jobs unfilledand some experts say those estimates are far too conservative. Former Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich, for one, estimates that there are more than 600,000 openings in IT organizations right nowand that number could double when the economy recovers. Says Reich: "We can say with certitude that the shortage is still there, it is still quite large, and it is likely to grow much larger when the economy is back on track."
It's not that there isn't any tech talent out there. According to dot-com headhunter Allison Hemming, president of New York City-based The Hired Guns and organizer of the now-popular Pink Slip parties for displaced dot-commers, plenty of young technologists are out floating their resumes, eager to hone their skills in a traditional corporate environment. Trouble is, traditional companies aren't all that crazy about former dot-commers. Sure, they're welcome in some jobs. But there's some skepticism among top HR executives about how well they'd fit into high-level positions. Michael Haefner, senior vice president of human resources for travel systems company Sabre Inc., will only hire dot-commers if they can demonstrate an ability to anticipate future business needs and build systems sophisticated enough to meet them. Many dot-commers, he says, "never had to deal with the problem of scale"systems that can handle higher volumes or speeds as a business grows and more demand is put on them. Adds TRW Inc.'s CIO and vice president Mostafa Mehrabani: Many techies who went the dot-com route will either abandon a corporate IT job when the next hot trend comes along, or they'll have a hard time adjusting to the traditional corporate culture because many went straight to a dot-com right after graduation. "The ones who have the most difficulty adjusting are the 23-year-olds who had a title of vice president of strategy or technology or HR, and had huge stock options and no sense of the reality of the normal workforce. These are the kids who do not want to go work for large companies and become a number," he says.
But that skepticism is only a small part of the problem: What's continuing to daunt CIOs the most is a lack of people with both technology and business strategy skills, still in chronic short supply. And thanks to the push by more and more companies to rewire themselves to the Internet from the ground up, that shortage is being felt now more acutely than ever. Says Reich: "People who have insight and experience both at the cutting edge of IT and at the cutting edge of strategy in a particular business are extremely hard to find." Just ask Hill. In e-business projects, Hill says, "you have more constituents to satisfy in a shorter time frame. The learning curve isn't a curveit's a cliff. There aren't many who have gone up that cliff."
How bad does it get? Companies are paying high premiumsup to 18 percent above salaryto IT pros who possess the right mix of tech know-how and business strategy skills for their needs. For large companies in particular, that reflects the fact that today's IT labor shortage is as bad as ever, if not worse. An April CIO Insight survey found that while only 28 percent of companies with fewer than 1,000 employees are hiring IT staff, 55 percent of companies with more than 1,000 employees are still hiring. And of those larger companies, 78 percent say finding qualified staff is as difficult as it was a year ago, or more so.
According to Robert Zawacki, a retention expert and professor emeritus of management and international business at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CIOs and IT executives at large firms such as Alcoa Inc., The Kroger Co. and Johnson & Johnson anticipate no letup in the IT talent shortage, and have seen no increase in applicants for IT openings. Zawacki, who runs a network for CIOs and IT HR executives, says there is a prevailing sense that this is no time to roll back employee perks such as extra health benefits and telecommuting privileges.
What to do? There's always money. In 2000, CIOs boosted IT salaries by 10.1 percent, according to David Foote, president of Foote Partners LLC, a Stamford, Conn.-based employment research firm. That's well above the 4 percent average for other workers cited by WorldAtWork, a Scottsdale, Ariz.-based professional compensation and benefits association that tracks compensation at Fortune 500 firms. Companies are still paying more to land MIS grads: Their average salary increased by 5.4 percent, to $45,167, according to a survey released in April by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
The problem with money, of course, is that it doesn't buy loyalty. Other factorsincluding a challenging work environment and a strong relationship with the bossmatter far more when it comes to retention. Employment experts say the data suggests that CIOs, especially when budgets are tight, may need to adopt a compensation strategy that rewards high achievers instead of warm bodies.
Promoting Loyalty
Promoting Loyalty
That's what's happening now. According to Foote, CIOs are taking advantage of the economic climate to stop handing out big raises and bonuses to inexperienced staff or those whose skills sets are not well-matched to high-priority technology projects. Meanwhile, companies are redirecting their bonus pool to proven performers, and tying these rewards much more to team or project performance rather than to individual performance. Consider the numbers. In the first quarter of 2001, companies reined in base pay to a slight 0.9 percent increase, and started paying less for many networking, operating systems, ERP and database skills, specifically TCP/IP, Microsoft NT Server, Linux, Oracle DB, DB2, SAP and Siebel. The median bonus paid for these skills declined overall by 3 percent between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the first quarter of 2001. However, variable pay such as bonuses and incentives increased by 3.1 percent of base pay, while pay premiums for workers who've earned Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle and networking certifications increased by 11.4 percent overall, and as much as 2 percent to 5 percent of base pay for workers most in demand. In short, CIOs are rewarding IT managers and staff who are successfully completing the key projects that can make or break a CIO's reputation.
Employee Relationship Management
Employee Relationship Management
Companies are also adding on non-cash benefits to lure top IT talent, or keep them from roaming. Some companies now offer casual dress policies, flex time and telecommuting options. But some companies are getting more inventive as a result of the widening skills gap. IT workers at the Houghton Mifflin Company, for example, can look forward to birthday parties, Friday afternoon gatherings, spot bonuses and IT incubators that give them the chance to turn their IT projects into revenue-generating products, according to Mark Mooney, HMC's chief technology officer.
Another way companies are battling the shortages is by creating new on-the-job training programs to improve managers' people skills and make them better supervisors. According to the Human Resource Institute, "bad bosses" are cited among the top reasons why IT workers fail to stay on the job. "When companies do exit interviews, tech workers always say they're leaving for more money or a better job, but when we interview them later, they tell us it's because of that 'SOB' boss," says Jay Jamrog, executive director of research at the Human Research Institute at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla. At Sabre, a lack of communication skills by supervisors factored among reasons cited for IT worker turnover. "We found most of the people who left weren't necessarily looking to leave Sabre, but when they got another job offer, they didn't really know where they stood at Sabre," says Haefner.
Little wonder, then, that companies are asking more of managers. Sabre, for one, is teaching managers to help their staff set performance objectives and provide feedback, coaching and career planning to employees. Strengthening the supervisor-employee relationship is a way to "re-recruit" existing employees, says Haefner. "Managers are not always able to communicate that total value proposition; they tend to get stuck on one thing like pay or stock options."
Most significantly, though, the widening skills gap and IT worker shortage is spurring many companies to completely rethink the core of their hiring and retention strategies. Consider Haefner's phrase, "total value proposition." Identifying what matters most to each employee and pinpointing how the company can help each get what they want out of their careers over the long-term is the key to successfully grabbing and keeping talent.
James W. Walker, author of Human Resource Planning and Human Resource Strategy, calls this the "value package," and says it must be customized to each individual, particularly for top talent and older employees with fairly complex work-balance issues. "A value package includes continuing learning, career opportunities, flexibility, autonomy, compensation, and the relationship with immediate managers and team members." The "employee value proposition" similar to the customer value proposition used by companies now to lure and retain new customersis "the answer to why the most talented people should work and stay at your company," says Roberson. To put it another way, think of a job as a product you are selling in the technical marketplace, he says. "If large numbers of customers didn't like your product, if you had high customer defection rates, what would you do? Make the product competitive in quality and price point, and put in metrics and tracking systems," Roberson says. Jobs, he says, are the products companies offer technical professionals, "and most companies offer a poor product. The job is boring, the tools are not particularly good, and the leadership and work environment is poor."
Winning Elements
Winning Elements
Sabre responded to the tight labor market by developing an integrated approach to retention between 1997 and 2000. According to Haefner, the four-point approach of Sabre's "Winning Elements" strategyopportunity, reward, compensation and communityinvolved rewarding workers through total compensation and recognition, offering them work-life balance and providing them with a meaningful community of co-workers. Also critical: granting stock options to all employees, tying compensation to business performance, putting benefit information online and training managers. The result? IT staff turnover at Sabre has decreased dramaticallyfrom 12 percent to 5.5 percent. And Sabre is not alone: Harrah's Entertainment Inc., another company that developed its own integrated HR strategy, slashed its turnover rate from 35 percent to 9 percent.
Still, CIOs are concluding that focusing on recruitment and retention alone isn't enough to battle the chronic shortages. Among CIOs who outsource their IT work, 64 percent cite a lack of internal staff or skills as the top reasons they've done so, according to a May 2001 CIO Insight study on outsourcing. Outsourcing is clearly a component now of many companies' IT human relations strategies. According to McKinsey's Roberson, CIOs need to weigh which skills needs should be met through full-time staff, and which through outsourcers or part-timers. What can be better done through outsourcing? "Be clear about what you're uniquely good at," Roberson advises.
Another question CIOs should consider is how long they want to keep their full-time staff. The obvious answeras long as possibleisn't necessarily the right one, according to University of Dayton, Ohio, professor Tom Ferratt, co-author of Coping with Labor Scarcity in Information Technology: Strategies and Practices for Effective Recruitment and Retention. Retention strategies that encourage long employee tenures make little sense in companies that demand high achievement, high energy and high rates of change. The reason: Stress inevitably leads to high burnout rates. In addition, some IT jobs do not require in-depth business knowledge, and therefore don't benefit from many years of experience in a company. Encouraging long-term retention makes more sense for IT jobs that put a premium on industry and company knowledge, says Ferratt.
Whatever you do, be selective. Between 1998 and 2008, the five fastest-growing occupations will be in IT, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statisticsbut there will be fewer and fewer people to fill them. There has been a 4 percent drop in the 18- to 34-year-old population since 1990, and the Census Bureau predicts that supply of 35- to 44-year-olds will decline by 14 percent by 2015. The lesson? If you haven't taken a good hard look at your company's hiring and retention strategies lately, get moving. Your e-business initiatives could hang in the balance. Says human resources expert Walker: "HR strategy isn't about the people in the organization, it's about how the organization gets its strategy implemented through people."
Alan Horowitz, the author of The Unofficial Guide to Hiring and Firing People (Macmillan, 1999), has written about business, technology and human resource issues for 20 years. Comments on this article can be sent to email@example.com.
: Harrah's Entertainment">
Profile: How Harrah's Found Its Groove
In 1998, CIO John Boushy was unhappy to find his IT staff was leaving Harrah's Entertainment at the rate of 35 percent a year. Today, turnover is down to a scant 9 percent. How did he do it?
When Boushy and Eileen Cassini, vice president of IT Services (which includes IT human resources), began to confront the turnover issue, Boushy thought increasing salaries would keep people from taking other jobs. But both remembered when they had happily stayed at jobs despite the pay. The real question, they realized, wasn't "Why are people leaving?"; it was "Why are people not staying?"
"They sound like the same questions, but they are not," says Boushy, for they lead in different directions. Instead of pay, they redirected their thinking to creating "a culture and environment where people want to stay."
Boushy and Cassini turned to two well-known theories of human motivation: Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs" and Frederick Herzberg's "two-factor theory." In Maslow's hierarchy, higher level needs such as the need to learn and realize one's potentialtwo factors that drive high performersonly receive attention if basic needs such as physical comfort, safety and acceptance are met. Herzberg's theory, on the other hand, says external conditions that must be met to prevent dissatisfactionsuch as salary and working conditionsmust be considered separately from internal factors, such as achievement and recognition, which motivate people from within. Boushy and Cassini synthesized these ideas: Take care of basic needs, and you'll avoid dissatisfaction; focus on intrinsic needs, and you'll have an eager, excited IT staff.
They first mapped such factors as compensation and the work environment to Maslow's hierarchy, to identify potential dissatisfiers and motivators. Then the IT management team tackled those dissatisfiers: Base salaries were raised 5 to 7 percent to competitive levels, and a dual technical and managerial career track was created.
At the same time, they addressed intrinsic motivators such as recognition, achievement, and self-actualization, and broke them down into four categories.
Communications: IT management started to publicize and discuss current projects among their staff, focusing first on cool technology to grab attention, then on the value these projects bring to Harrah's business. This internal public relations effort spurred the quantification of the business value of IT work, and helped non-IT staff appreciate the importance of the IT effort at Harrah's. Boushy's team also sought out to win awards and media attention, which provided further recognition for the organization's achievements.
Choice of projects: As discussing business value became part of the culture, Harrah's IT management team changed its way of staffing projects. Rather than assign people, management publicized new projects, opened up a discussion of its business value, and then encouraged qualified staff to volunteer.
Career development and job mapping: To establish qualifications, Boushy's organization developed a "career progression matrix" which listed the skills required by every job, and then launched a procedure to certify that an IT staff member met the requirements for the job. Training was boosted to more than two weeks a year on average per employee.
Choice of where to work: Employees are now allowed to work at home, if they meet certain minimum qualifications.
Within a year of fully implementing this program, turnover dropped to 13 percent a year. Today, undesired turnover is only 5 percent. No wonder Cassini is reluctant to change Harrah's HR strategy, regardless of economic conditions. "It's working for us," he says. No question there.
Paying for Achievement
Paying for Achievement
Between 4th quarter 2000 and 1st quarter 2001, CIOs diverted bonuses to proven performers. (Changes represent a percentage of average base pay; "hot" skills and certifications are those receiving pay premiums over 10 percent in 1st quarter 2001.)
- 0.2%
Average decrease in bonuses for IT workers with "hot" skills
Average increase in bonuses for IT workers with "hot" certifications
Average increase in bonuses for high-performing IT professionals
Source: Foote Partners, LLC Hot Technical Skills & Certifications Pay Index, 1st Quarter 2001.
Room for Improvement
Room for Improvement
Many companies fail to use the 10 most effective techniques for retaining IT talent. For example, giving IT workers additional vacation days, the sixth most effective technique, ranks 25th in prevalence in a study of 33 different retention techniques.
|Challenging Work Assignments
|Everyday Casual
|Flex Time
|Support for Career and Family Values
|Favorable Work Environment
|Additional Vacation Days/Time Off
|Premium for Defined Set of Hot Skills
|Project Completion Bonuses
|Stay/Retention Bonuses
|Project Milestone Bonuses
Source: William M. Mercer 2000 Attracting and Retaining High-Technology Talent Report, based on a nation-wide survey of 935 organizations from all industries.
Hiring in 2001
Hiring in 2001
Most Large-Company CIOs Are Still Hiring in 2001...
...And Having as Tough a Time as a Year Ago.
Source: CIO Insight Survey of 419 CIOs, April 2001.
The Five Fastest Growing
The Five Fastest Growing Occupations, 1998-2008
108% - Computer Engineers
102% - Computer Support Specialists
94% - System Analysts
77% - Database Administrators
73% - Desktop Publishing Specialists
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics
Information Management Forum IT/Human Resources Program
Next quarterly meeting: Sept. 10-11, 2001 in Atlanta
IT/HR Symposium Network
Next annual meeting: Sept. 12-14, 2001 in Cincinnati.
Contact: Prof. Robert Zawacki at email@example.com
Human Resource Institute, Eckerd College
Holds workshops, seminars and an annual conference in February.
The War for Technical Talent
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2000 Number 3
The War for Talent, Part Two
The McKinsey Quarterly, 2001 Number 2


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This is a question towards those who have experience in the IT industry with a degree in CS or CSE. Do you use any of the Calculus concept learned in college in IT jobs? If so, can you explain on what/how you used?
Calculus Applications in CS(E)Page 1 of 1
1 Replies - 1316 Views - Last Post: 28 September 2012 - 07:22 PM
Calculus Applications in CS(E)
Posted 28 September 2012 - 12:34 AM
Replies To: Calculus Applications in CS(E)
Re: Calculus Applications in CS(E)
Posted 28 September 2012 - 07:22 PM
Unless you're doing mathematical or scientific computing, you probably won't be using Calculus in the workplace. Really, you probably won't be using much more math than simple algebra.
Page 1 of 1


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As an entrepreneur, time can be one of your most precious assets. Effective time management involves planning the amount of time you spend on all of the tasks of running a business -- and your personal life -- to get things done in the most effective and productive manner.
You can improve your time management skills by using a range of tools and techniques used to accomplish specific tasks, projects and goals. Some of the elements of effective time management include creating a productive environment, setting of priorities and reducing distractions.


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WASHINGTON, Jan. 10 (UPI) -- The U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 6.7 percent in December with a far-lower-than-expected 74,000 new jobs, the Labor Department said Friday.
The jobs total was way below the 200,000 new jobs economists had expected and the 182,000 jobs per month average for the year.
The data from December put into sharp focus the influence people leaving the workforce have on the unemployment rate.
"The overall unemployment rate declined to 6.7 percent in December, the lowest since October 2008, but the lingering elevation in the unemployment rate is due to the large number of persons unemployed for more than 27 weeks," said Jason Furman chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.
People unemployed for 26 weeks or less represent 4.1 percent of the labor force, "in line with the average during the 2001-2007 expansion period," Furman said.
Long-term unemployment, however, was 2.5 percent in December compared to 1 percent before the recession, he said.
The U.S. Federal Reserve in December began to taper off on its $85 billion-per-month quantitative easing program, dropping securities purchases to $75 billion each month.
At the time, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said that the large numbers of people leaving the workforce was a factor in the unemployment rate.
With the sharp drop-off in jobs, analysts will question whether the Fed's tapering strategy was initiated too soon.
"Unemployment dropped to 6.7 percent because 525,000 additional unemployed adults were discouraged and did not seek a job," said University of Maryland economics Professor Peter Morici.
The Labor Department said the number of unemployed people shrank by 490,000 to 10.4 million in December, making a total of 1.9 million fewer people counted as unemployed during the year.
From January to December, the unemployment rate showed a sizable drop of 1.2 percentage points.
The Labor Department said the civilian labor force participation rate fell 0.2 percentage points to 62.8 percent in December. Over the year, the rate was down 0.8 percentage points, even though the employment-to-total-population ratio was unchanged at 58.6 percent.
The department said 2.4 million people in December were deemed marginally attached to the workforce because they had looked for work in the past 12 months. Within that category, 917,000 are deemed discouraged workers because the statistics separate those who quit looking for work because they believe there is no job available from those who stopped looking for work due to other obligations, such as attending school or family concerns.
The number of those marginally attached to the workforce is "little changed" from a year earlier while the number of those considered discouraged is down by 151,000 from a year ago.


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One year after the meetings dissolved, the couples come back together to work out their problems. Tonight, Emily makes them re-live their first date. She's going to force them to focus on positive stuff...even if it makes them miserable.
Past Meetings
Emily's Email
Subscribe and find out when new episodes come out and more.


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Story Updated 04/08/09 (see end) Jon Engle is a graphic designer from New Mexico. He has done work for many TV shows and TV networks as well as countless Web sites.
However, a recent series of events has put Engle's reputation at risk. According to a post in Engle's blog, a stock art site has accused him of copyright infringement. They have presented him with an $18,000 bill, threatened him with a lawsuit and even contacted his previous clients, claiming that he was under investigation for infringement and that the work he did for them "may have been stolen from their client."
The problem, according to Engle, is that he created the works himself and that he believes someone uploaded them to the stock photography site without his permission, and in violation of that site's terms of service. But the company, feeling that the uploads were legitimate, are aggressively protecting what they see as their intellectual property, using their copyright attorney.
However, it doesn't matter who is in the right in this case. For either side to clear their name, they are going to have to prove that the work is theirs. Unfortunately, as Engle admits, this will not be a simple matter as he "would never have thought to plan for something like this". Though he has some incidental proof, namely upload dates to LogoPond and metadata in the files themselves, these are hardly ideal since Engle is not completely sure when the images were lifted.
Engle's story highlights the need for writers, artists, photographers and other creators to be aware that there are a million ways their work could come into dispute and to prepare for such a situation in advance. The end goal is be in a situation where, no matter what happens to your work, you always have proof that you created it first. [Read more…]


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Detailed plot synopsis reviews of The Moon's Shadow
Chapter Analysis of The Moon's Shadow
Click on a plot link to find similar books!
Plot & ThemesComposition of Book Descript. of chases or violence 10%planning/preparing, gather info, debate puzzles/motives 40%Feelings, relationships, character bio/development 40%Descript. of society, phenomena (tech), places 10% Tone of book - suspenseful (sophisticated fear) FANTASY or SCIENCE FICTION? - science fiction story Spying & Investigations - Yes What is main char. doing? - finding an assassin (political) Political power play - Yes Political plotlets - factions fight within govt for control Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book
Main CharacterIdentity: - Male Profession/status: - Prince/Nobleman/King Age: - a teen
SettingEarth setting: - distant future Takes place on Earth? - Yes
Writing StyleAccounts of torture and death? - generic/vague references to death/punishment How much dialogue? - significantly more dialog than descript
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